Indianapolis attorney returns from border with stories she could not 'fathom'

Sarah and Brendan Burrow just returned from doing volunteer work with detainees near the U.S.-Mexico border in Dilley, Texas.
Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar, Indianapolis Star

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Sarah Burrow, left, and her husband Brendan Burrow talk in Sarah's Lewis Kappes law firm office, in downtown Indianapolis, Tuesday, July 10, 2018. Sarah is an immigration attorney with the firm, and the couple just returned from doing volunteer work with the CARA Pro Bono Project, working with detainees in detention near the Mexico/U.S. border. (Photo11: Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar)Buy Photo

As news of families being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border reached Indiana, two Hoosiers decided they could not just sit and watch.

Indianapolis immigration attorney Sarah Burrow, 39, and her husband, Brendan, 37, flew to Dilley, Texas, for a weeklong volunteering trip at a women and children's detention center. They returned Saturday with dozens of stories and a desire to share them with fellow Hoosiers.

“For many Americans, we can’t comprehend the amount of terror, the horror that a lot of these people go through,” said Brendan, a stay-at-home father to their 10-year-old triplets.

Sarah, an attorney at Lewis Kappes law firm, took the week off work to help women and children through the Dilley Pro Bono Project, a coalition of immigrant legal service organizations.

She and her husband worked 15-hour days primarily out of a trailer in the South Texas Family Residential Center, the largest family detention center in the United States, according to the Dilley Pro Bono Project website. It can hold up to 2,400 people, though Dilley Pro Bono Project advocacy coordinator Katy Murdza said the number is usually less.

Sarah said she wanted to go to Texas to set an example of compassion for her children and to bring back to Indianapolis a firsthand account of stories from the border.

“(I) started to feel like people in the Midwest weren’t really aware of what was happening, and it seemed here that people were disassociated, like it was too far away,” Sarah said. “It’s happening a four-hour flight away from us. That’s pretty incredible.”

The immigration detention center

Their day started at 7 a.m., when the Burrows went through a lengthy security process. Volunteers are not allowed to bring in cellphones, makeup or food wrapped in tin foil, Murdza said.

From the security trailer, the Burrows walked through a metal detector and down a hall to the pro bono project trailer, without as much as a glimpse at the immigrant residential areas of the facility.

None of the 30 volunteers, or any of the seven Dilley Pro Bono Project year-round staff, is allowed to go anywhere else in the facility without an official.

In the Dilley Pro Bono Project trailer, which the Burrows said fluctuated between "really freezing" and "suffocating," dozens of immigrant women in institutionally issued, brightly colored T-shirts and jeans or sweatpants waited with their children.

The immigrants had come from chilly holding facilities that Sarah said they referred to as the "icebox." There, she said, children had been kept in fenced enclosures and given foil blankets.

The women who were brought to the Dilley detention center could consult with pro bono legal advocates, like Sarah. She met in groups and individually with women to prepare their petitions seeking asylum. The women need to show that they have a “credible fear” of returning to their home countries in order to begin the asylum process.

They need to prove that they would face persecution in their home country for their race, religion, nationality, social group or political opinion.

"These are people who are just making the best choice for their child's safety," Murdza said. "It has to be a pretty extreme situation to put them through that journey."

If an asylum officer decided that a woman did not have "credible fear," Sarah helped her write a petition for review by an immigration judge, whom the woman would meet via video teleconference in the immigration court trailer.

Horror stories from south of the border

In the process, Sarah, who speaks Spanish, said she met women from all over Central America.

"I could sense that she wasn't giving me the full story and that she was kind of talking around it," Sarah said. She offered to bring the little boy to the facility's child playroom.

"I came back and she opened up. ... There are these small glimpses of how far a mother will go to protect her child. I mean, the child had already lived through it and her not wanting to make him relive (it)."

The woman told Sarah that she was trying to make a living selling tortillas in El Salvador. A gang began extorting her for money. When she was unable to pay, they gang raped her while her toddler and infant looked on, with guns held to their heads.

“To survive that and then make this arduous, almost 2,000-mile journey, with babies,” Sarah said. “And then ending up at this family residential center … From a humanity perspective, that just feels all wrong to me.”

Such stories can strike an emotional chord, but Pro Bono Project volunteers are restricted in how they show empathy. The volunteers are not allowed to touch their clients other than a handshake.

"We can't hug them, which is really hard when some of these clients have shared something they've never told anyone before," Murdza said. "Sometimes the kids try to hug us, and it's really hard to reject a hug really quickly without hurting someone's feelings."

Brendan took notes during asylum interviews, helped the other volunteers and performed administrative tasks. Although he does not speak Spanish and was one of the only volunteers without a law background, Brendan said he found plenty of ways to help.

“It was very rewarding," Brendan said. "It was no time wasted. Everyone worked as hard as they possibly could."

He said he met one woman from Honduras who arrived at the detention center with her young daughter. They had left the woman's husband and son in Mexico to seek another port of entry. When they arrived in the U.S., the mother was separated from her daughter for part of a day.

"That was hell for her," Brendan said.

The woman had been gang raped as a young girl by her cousin and his friends, Brendan said she told him. When she was a bit older, she went to the police about another issue, but the officer ignored her request for an investigation, began an abusive relationship with her and impregnated her through rape.

She was going to keep the baby, Brendan said, but the officer "beat her up so badly and threw her up against the wall that she had a miscarriage."

He said her experience with corrupt and threatening police officers was typical for the women he met at the detention center.

A rally for immigration reform

The Burrows’ trip concluded before Tuesday's deadline from a California federal judge that immigrant children under 5 years old who were separated from their parents under President Trump's zero-tolerance policy be reunited with their parents. The policy was part of the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, but on June 20 the president signed an executive order that ended the practice of separating parents from children. The government has yet to reunite all the families.

More than 2,000 children were separated from their parents at the border since the announcement of the policy in April, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The policy required that all immigrants crossing the border illegally be held in criminal custody, so any children in their care were taken from them and sent to shelters.

“The purpose is to celebrate immigrants in the U.S. while also drawing attention and awareness to the tragedy that is immigration right now,” Wilson said.

The event will feature musicians, dance groups, spoken-word artists and speeches from state Rep. Dan Forestal and City-County Council member Blake Johnson. Local restaurants such as Jockamo Pizza and Lincoln Square will be selling food.

Brendan said he hopes sharing his and his wife’s experience about helping immigrants at the border will bring a restored faith in humanity.

“If I’m taking anything back,” Brendan said, “it’s a renewed sense of confidence in my understanding of history and watching it play out and trying to be on the side that history will view kindly.”